After the queen's departure and with the council's work completed, work immediately began on the construction of a great bridge of boats across the Douro at a place known as Barca da Régua, thus enabling troops from Beira to cross over without going via Oporto. The king posted no frontier garrison elsewhere in the kingdom, except between the Tagus and the Guadiana, where Vasco Martins de Melo was stationed with his sons Gonçalo Vasques and Martim Afonso, Martim Gonçalves, who was the Count's uncle, Gómez García de Hoyos and others, numbering all together 250 lances. As for the troops in the king's force, they came to 3,000 lances, 2,000 crossbowmen and more than 4,000 foot soldiers, apart from others who had at once come in answer to the general summons the king had made when besieging Coria.

If anyone were to query whether the king should take so many men with him, more indeed than he was obliged to by the treaty, and were to argue that the increased expense would be an unwelcome payment of wages, then he would be quite right to do so. However, the king took counsel first. Some said he should not assemble more troops than he was obliged to. Others asserted that it was unsafe for him to set forth without extra forces, for, if he invaded enemy territory in that fashion, the duke might strike a dishonourable deal with the King of Castile; on that account he ought to advance with the greatest possible strength, so that he could safely counter any adverse turn of events. Moreover, it showed that he had sufficient forces to assist the duke and had additional troops if they were needed. Therefore, he took with him the [extra] numbers that we have mentioned.

The duke took very few of his own troops, because many of them had died during the course of that winter he had spent in Galicia, including able captains, archers and other men-at-arms. Some relate that numbers of them died of the plague, and others from shortages of various kinds. Some of them were killed in the woods and on the heathland by those who found them out foraging for food, for, though some people in that region at first rallied to the duke, they later changed their minds and secretly inflicted much havoc on his troops.